Management Skills

Sinead Bidwell

Social Gift

Social Gift is an app that will allow users to create their own profiles and match with
other users in order to help each other learn new languages and to build a friendship
together. The app focuses on learning new languages but also encourages users to
be sociable and spend time conversing with each other.

Social Gift will be available on most platforms such as mobile devices, laptops, and
PCs. The app will allow users to create a profile about themselves including their
likes and dislikes, hobbies, the languages they already know and the languages they
want to learn. Users would then get to see other users’ profiles and match with
someone who speaks the language they want to learn and also has similar interests.
Once a match has been made, the two users could then arrange sessions, up to 2
hours per session, where they could video chat and have verbal conversations with
each other. The conversation topics would be decided by the users which means it
could be specific topics or just conversations about their day. The aim is to get users
to feel confident in their speaking whilst learning new languages and then to
potentially make friends with people they wouldn’t normally interact with.

The app would initially be free but would have a premium version of £11.99 a month
which would ‘unlock’ more features to the app. The table below lists the different
features each version includes.
FREE PREMIUM
- Video Chat - Video Chat
- In-app messaging - In-app messaging
- Ability to create customised - Ability to create customised
profile profile
- Ability to swipe and match with - Ability to swipe and match with
users users
- Learn up to 3 languages or have - Unlimited matches and
3 matches at once languages at any time
- Unlimited time in sessions
- Ability to undo a swipe if they
swiped the wrong way on
someone
- Ability to use specific filters to
match with users i.e. by location,
gender, age, etc.
- Ad free

Premium users can also opt to have

their social media links public on their
profile if they wish to communicate
outside of the app.
If someone with a premium profile matches with a free profile then any features that
would affect session length and communicating would follow the features of the free
profile only.

Social Gift would be a mix of the freemium business model and also the paywall
business model as it is down to the user whether they want to pay for more features
or not. Freemium business models make it “easy to build up a large user base and
showcase (the) app” (Upland Software, 2022) meaning it would be good at allowing
users to try out the basic features of my app before they decide to commit to the
subscribed version. The negatives to this model are that I’d need to make sure users
with the free version still have a good experience using my app and aren’t so limited
in what they can do. Also, I’d need to ensure I wasn’t providing too many free
features that make subscribing not worth it so I would have to find a balance
between the two extremes. The paywall model means users have to pay to access
more content than is available for free. For my app, the paywall model would allow
users to use the app for free but then they’d have to subscribe to unlock more
features and content.

Social Gift will be trialled to people in London, but then will be available to people in
England and would expand as the business grew. I decided to trial the app in
London as it is has a population of 9,541,000 (MacroTrends, 2022) making up 14%
of the total population of England as well as having more than 250 languages
spoken in the city. This makes it a good place to trial my app as it has a large variety
of people who could be potential users.

TAM = Population of London and the revenue if they all paid the £11.99 subscription
SAM = Population of Brixton and the revenue if they all paid the £11.99 subscription
SOM = Population of Brixton aged between 25-40 and the revenue if they all paid
the £11.99 subscription

Brixton is the 3rd most culturally diverse place in London and has a large population
of people aged between 25 and 40. I’m targeting this age range as it’s adults that are
wanting to start learning languages again after they’ve finished school. My app is
targeted towards adults as there is the option to video chat other users so for
safeguarding reasons I don’t want under 16’s using the app.

The language learning industry is a competitive market with apps averaging users of
over 10 million per app. My direct competitor is Tandem which is a language learning
website that allows users to talk to each other via video chat and text. They have
roughly 18 million users whereas Duolingo has over 100 million users. Reviews of
Tandem say that technically their website is faulty, and the calls cut out mid-
conversation. For Duolingo, users like the ease of the app and the daily reminders.
This shows that users like easy navigation, notifications, and the ability to
communicate directly with other users. I also found that searching for language apps
doesn’t always bring up tandem learning apps which is what mine will be. This is
because tandem learning isn’t widely advertised so people don’t know about it or
what the difference is. Tandem language learning is when users are communicating
with each other and collaborating rather than using read and repeat apps.

My competitive advantage will be the fact that my app will constantly be updated to
ensure it runs efficiently. I will also focus on the app being custom to each user, they
will have the freedom to create their own profile to suit them and their style. Social
Gift will act as a host app providing the resources but it will be down to the user to
decide who they match with, when they practice, etc.

I’d need approximately £500,000 to start my business. After doing research, I worked
out my costs to be:
- Developing a complex app is £50,00
- £30,000 base salary for a software developer
- £37,000 base salary for a marketer
- £24,000 base salary for a graphic designer
- £40,000 base salary for a data analyst
- £30,000 base salary for research and development
- £47,000 base salary for an IT support
- £24,000 for marketing
- £175,000 as contingency
- £47,00 for further app development

For my roadmap, I worked out the minimum I’d have to make to cover the app
development and then worked out the minimum I’d like to make after that. The
projection is significantly smaller than my SOM as my SOM is based on if everyone
in that group paid for the subscription for a whole year. In my first year, I’d need to
make £100,000 to cover the app cost twice which would mean I’d need 8,400
subscribers. For the second year, I’d like to at least double that amount so I’d like to
have 16,800 subscribers and have made £200,000 in revenue. By year 3, I’d like to
triple year 2’s goal. This means I’d want to have 50,400 subscribers which is the
equivalent of my SOM population twice. 50,400 subscribers would bring in £600,000
in revenue which would be enough to cover my initial investment.

I’d like to promote on Instagram as social media marketing has low costs meaning I’d
be able to have higher profits from the app. As well as Instagram, I’d use Facebook
to target the older section of my target audience. Social media marketing would be
the best option to promote my app as people will be using devices to use my
product. As well as being cheap, it is easy to do as it doesn’t require too many
people to film content or to create the posts. I decided not to do printed marketing as
my product is digital so it makes more sense to market digitally as that is where my
target audience is.
Bibliography:

- Upland Software (2022) App Monetization: 6 Models for Mobile Apps to Make
Money. Available at:
https://uplandsoftware.com/localytics/resources/blog/app-monetization-6-
bankable-business-models-that-help-mobile-apps-make-money/ (Accessed:
2nd November 2022)
- Rice, Mae (no date) Freemium, Explained. Available at:
https://builtin.com/product/freemium (Accessed: 2nd November 2022)
- White, Madeleine (2021) What is a Paywall? – Definition and Examples.
Available at: https://blog.poool.fr/what-is-a-paywall-definition-examples-and-
best-practices/ (Accessed: 2nd November 2022)
- MacroTrends (2022) ‘London, UK Metro Area Population 1950-2022’.
Available at: https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/22860/london/population
(Accessed: 3rd November 2022)
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london/#:~:text=More%20than%20250%20languages%20are,English%20as
%20their%20first%20language (Accessed: 3rd November 2022)
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https://www.sprachenzentrum.hu-berlin.de/en/independent-
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(Accessed: 16th November 2022)
- Glassdoor (2022) https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/index.htm (Accessed:
16th November 2022)
- Moovaz (2022) ‘3 most culturally diverse areas in London and what to do
there’, Moovaz, January 31 2022, Available at:
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what-to-do-there/ (Accessed 17th November 2022)